


Inheritance

by StormyDaze



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Feelings, Hurt/Comfort, OC Nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:22:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23841445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormyDaze/pseuds/StormyDaze
Summary: When Daphne's ex-mentor Lucinda dies in an accident, Daphne is surprised to learn Lucinda left her all her possessions. Apparently, that includes Callan.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 5
Kudos: 31
Collections: What Fen Do (Instead of Going Outside), When Death Loves Flamingos





	Inheritance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mornelithe_falconsbane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mornelithe_falconsbane/gifts).



> I don't really know where I was going with this. But, um, have some feelings? I hope you like it anyway.

Daphne surveyed the inside of the tower, wrinkling her nose. It seemed Lucinda hadn’t improved her home cleaning routines any since Daphne had left. Banana peels moldered on the sofa, cups of tea grew their own ecosystems on the bookshelf, and chicken bones littered the floor.

The living room was still coated in soot and ash from the explosion that had claimed Lucinda’s life, although someone had thankfully taken care of the body. Still, Daphne avoided that area, edging around it toward the bedroom instead.

She hadn’t even spoken to Lucinda in seven or eight years, so it was a shock to hear that her old teacher had left all her worldly possessions to Daphne. Really, Daphne didn’t even want them. There might be a few books worth salvaging, and a few magical artifacts that Daphne could sell, hopefully for enough cash to pay someone to clean out Lucinda’s tower. Or maybe she’d save everyone the trouble and just incinerate the whole thing.

The bedroom was just as disgusting as the living room, cosmetics staining the sheets and empty wine bottles creating a tripping hazard. Daphne kicked one into a large trunk at the foot of Lucinda’s bed.

The trunk shrieked.

Daphne froze. Leave it to Lucinda to have something nasty locked up in her _bedroom_. Daphne summoned a ball of flame, ready to hurl it at anything that looked at her funny, and snapped the lock from the trunk with a little bit of power and a twist of her fingers. It wasn’t even a magical lock, just a mundane one, but Daphne had zero patience for digging around in this pigsty for the key. She popped the top of the trunk.

A man looked up at her, eyes wide with fear, his hands pressed over his mouth to stifle more shrieks of terror. He was naked except for the slave collar around his neck, and small gashes and burns, some half-healed and some still fresh and open, littered his bare skin.

“Goddess’s fucking tits," Daphne swore.

<hr>

There was only so much Daphne could be expected to put up with in one day. She found a mostly clean towel under the bed and wrapped it around the man to preserve whatever remained of his modesty, and decided she was done with Lucinda’s tower for now.

“Hold on,” she said, grabbing his arm, and then she teleported them back to her own apartment.

Unlike Lucinda’s tower, Daphne’s apartment was clean and sparse, verging on minimalist. They landed in the middle of the white shag rug in the living room, and the man shrieked again.

“Hey, it’s okay, we’re home,” Daphne said. “Uh, sorry, probably should have introduced myself first. I’m Daphne, Lucinda’s, uh, ex-apprentice. What’s your name?”

The man looked at her warily. Now that she could get a better look at him, he was younger than she expected, maybe about her own age. Damn, Lucinda really was a fucking perv. His light brown hair came almost to his chin, and his wide eyes were a vivid shade of blue.

“Callan,” he said finally. “Do you know where my Mistress is?”

Had he been locked in that trunk since Lucinda died? How had no one _noticed?_ “There was an accident,” Daphne said. “A spell went wrong. She’s dead.” She wasn’t sure how Callan was going to react to this bit of news. She definitely wasn’t prepared to comfort him if he was upset about the death of someone who _locked him in a trunk._

But he just looked at the floor, processing this information. “What’s going to happen to me?” he asked.

“Well, Lucinda left all her possessions to me, which, uh, I guess includes you.” Inwardly, Daphne winced. Probably she could have said that more tactfully. “I’ll take care of you until we figure out what to do.”

Callan continued to stare at the floor. “Yes, Mistress.”

 _Fuck._ Her stomach definitely shouldn’t be doing the things it was doing when he said that. She should put a stop to that right now. Instead, she said, “The bathroom’s through there. Take a shower while I find something for you to wear.” It had been two days since Lucinda died. Spending that much time locked in a trunk hadn’t done much for his smell. “Clean towels are in the closet, leave that one for me to get rid of.”

Callan hesitated for a moment, maybe waiting for more orders, before slinking into the bathroom like he thought Daphne might change her mind. She sighed, rubbed the bridge of her nose, and cursed Lucinda to the hottest pits of hell.

After much searching, Daphne turned up a pair of soft pants and a shirt that her brother had probably left the last time he visited, and which looked like they might fit Callan. She also found a tub of healing salve that should still be good.

Callan was waiting for her in the living room when she returned, one of her clean towels tied around his waist. Daphne was pretty sure she’d never seen anyone shower so fast in her life. Lucinda’s towel sat folded on the coffee table nearby.

“Come sit down, I’ll put some of this on your wounds,” she said, flopping down on the couch with less grace than she would otherwise have liked. Callan knelt on the floor at her feet. That wasn’t what she’d meant, but it didn’t seem worth pointing it out now.

She took a second to really look at him from this new vantage point. His damp hair was curling slightly around his ears, and he had the palest smattering of freckles across his nose.

Damn, if nothing else, Lucinda had good taste.

Daphne shook herself and twisted the lid off the jar of salve, scooping some up with a finger. She smeared it over a large burn just below Callan’s collarbone and began to rub it into the skin. Callan gave a little hiss through his teeth but otherwise sat perfectly still, tense as an iron rod under her fingers.

“What the hell did Lucinda do to you?” Daphne muttered under her breath.

“Tried to light a candle while drunk, and missed,” Callan said. “The ones on my hands are from when she took blood for… luck potions, I think? She didn’t always tell me what she needed it for. The ones on my back were where she beat me for burning her dinner, or for not coming quickly enough when she called me, or because it made her wet when she—”

“Stop!” Daphne said. Callan flinched and snapped his mouth shut, and Daphne immediately felt bad about it. “Sorry. I just meant, I don’t need to hear about all of them. Or about what got Lucinda off, thanks, I overheard enough emotionally scarring things when I lived with her.” She rubbed some more salve into what looked like a knife wound on his shoulder. Tense silence settled over them like a wet blanket.

“That feels nice,” Callan said after a moment, looking up at her from under his lashes. He was relaxing gradually as she worked the salve into his wounds and kneaded some knots out of his muscles in the process. Daphne accepted this peace offering with a polite humming noise.

When all of the wounds were dressed, Daphne shoved the clothes at him and stood up. “Here, get dressed,” she said. She took Lucinda’s towel into the kitchen, set it in the large metal sink, and set it on fire. Watching it burn to ash did wonders for Daphne’s mood. She was going to burn the whole tower down, she decided, as soon as she’d verified that nothing in there was going to cause any more magical explosions.

She heard soft footsteps and turned around to find Callan lurking in the doorway. Her brother’s clothes hung off him, highlighting how thin he was. He peered at her expectantly from behind a curtain of damp hair.

“Are you hungry?” Daphne asked. Shit, stupid question, of course he was hungry. “Um, I have… cereal…” Cereal, protein bars, maybe eggs? She could cook eggs.

She poured him a bowl of cereal while she started to cook the eggs. Callan wolfed it down like he was afraid she was going to snatch it away from him. “Whoa, slow down, you’re going to make yourself sick,” she said.

He tore into the eggs as well when she set them down in front of him, making a little pleased whimper before slapping his hand over his mouth and looking at her guiltily. Daphne decided the kindest thing was to pretend not to notice. She fetched him a glass of water and, when he drained it in a few huge gulps, got him another one.

“How long were you with Lucinda?” she asked.

Callan thought about it. “A couple years, I think,” he said.

“And did she…” Daphne bit her tongue. “I mean, what did you…”

“I serviced her,” Callan said tonelessly. “Whenever she required. I cooked and cleaned for her. Sometimes she used me to test spells. If there’s something else you require from me, I’m sure I can learn it.”

“No, fuck, that’s not what I…” Daphne rubbed face. “Just, um, rest for now, okay? I’ll be in my workroom, help yourself to anything you need.” She got up and fled the room.

In her workroom, she sank down into the chair at her desk and rested her face in her hands, cursing Lucinda every way she knew how. She was no stranger to Lucinda’s cruelty, but there was a difference between a slap to the face for forgetting a potion ingredient and what Lucinda had done to Callan.

What was Daphne supposed to do with him? Set him free? She could hardly just turn him out on the street with no home or way to earn a living. Daphne was a freelance mage with a technically-unfinished apprenticeship, it wasn’t like she could afford to set him up somewhere. Letting him crash on her couch seemed like the best she could do.

The worst part was that, deep down, she knew there was a part of her that didn’t want to let Callan go. He was pretty, and her stomach did funny flips when he called her _Mistress,_ and something in her ached to feed him and pet him and use him so roughly that he cried, just so she could comfort him.

She’d told her family that she quit her apprenticeship with Lucinda because she was tired of being treated like shit, but it wasn’t really the truth. The truth was, she’d been afraid that she was turning into Lucinda, that Lucinda’s cruelty was seeping into her bones like poison until she would ruin everything she touched like Lucinda did.

Daphne thunked her head down against the desk.

When she finally gathered herself enough to venture back into the kitchen, night had fully fallen. Callan was sitting at the table, waiting for her. He’d done the dishes, she noticed. She grabbed a protein bar and threw herself into one of the chairs at the table.

“Look,” she said. “I’m not Lucinda, okay? I don’t want to be her. I’m not going to hurt you. You can leave if you want to, if you have family to go back to or something. Or you can stay, and I’ll make sure you get enough to eat, I need to go shopping but I promise I can make things other than eggs, and if you want to help out with the dishes and stuff that would be great, but you don’t have to. Okay?” Daphne realized she was babbling and cut herself off before she could make even more of a fool of herself.

Callan stared at her. “Okay,” he said at last. “I don’t have a family. Or anywhere to go. So if you want me to stay, I’ll do my best to serve you, Mistress.”

“You don’t need to serve me, that’s what I’m trying to say,” Daphne said.

“Of course, Mistress.”

Daphne decided that was the best she was going to get.

She found an extra blanket and pillow in the closet and put them on the couch for Callan, and then went to shower and get ready for bed herself. When she came back to check on him before going to sleep, she found him curled up on the couch, under the blanket. But Callan was tall, and the couch was small, and it reminded her viscerally of the way he had been curled up in that box at Lucinda’s.

“Okay, no, never mind, come sleep in the bedroom,” she said. “Not like that!” she added, seeing the look on Callan’s face. “Just sleep, okay, the bed is big enough. It’ll be more comfortable than the couch, anyway, just. Come on before I change my mind.” Callan got up and followed her obediently.

Daphne put out the lights and then slipped into bed, keeping a careful distance from Callan. She didn’t fall asleep until she heard his breath even out.

In the morning, Daphne woke to find herself curled around Callan, one arm thrown over his chest, with his head nestled in her shoulder. Well, so much for that. He looked peaceful, in sleep. His wariness was replaced with a gentle relaxation that softened his features. Daphne brushed a curl out of his eyes and found herself smiling sappily.

She tried to extricate herself without waking him, but his eyes flew open, and for a moment he looked confused before he jerked away, eyes going wide with terror.

“No, it’s okay, you’re safe,” she said. “Uh, sorry, forgot to warn you that I get clingy when I sleep. Totally my fault, sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Callan said.

“So how about we go shopping today?” Daphne said. “I need groceries. What do you like to eat, anyway?”

“I… don’t know,” Callan said. “Whatever you like is fine, Mistress.”

“We’ll get a lot of stuff,” Daphne said. “You can try whatever you want and see what you like.”

At the market, Daphne piled the basket high with things like bread and potatoes and all kinds of vegetables. Eating cereal for three meals a day was fine when you lived alone, but you couldn’t feed a guest that, and Callan was a guest, at least until they figured out what things were going to be like long-term.

Callan was fascinated by the ice cream, kept cold in a glass case by simple freezing spells, so Daphne bought three flavors. Any excuse for ice cream was a good one, in her opinion.

When Callan took his first bite of ice cream, his smile was blinding like the sun. Daphne wanted to make him smile like that more often.

Damn, she was fucked, wasn’t she.

Callan relaxed more and more as the days passed. His wounds healed up nicely, leaving smooth skin behind. Daphne tried to ignore how much she wanted to touch it, and instead worked on coaxing more of those brilliant smile out of him. Once she made him laugh, a short, surprised sound that he quickly stifled.

Still, she had to do something about Lucinda’s tower. It loomed in the back of her mind, casting a shadow over everything. She felt like she couldn’t move on until it was dealt with.

“So I’m gonna burn Lucinda’s tower to the ground, want to come watch?” In retrospect, she probably could have segued into that more gracefully rather than springing it on Callan at breakfast, but the past few days had given her plenty of cause to realize exactly how terrible her interpersonal skills were.

Callan raised an eyebrow at her. It was almost as cute as a smile. Lucinda probably never got to see that smartass eyebrow raise. It made Daphne glow inside.

“Sounds excellent,” he said.

Several days’ neglect hadn’t improved the smell of the place any. Callan looked a little green when they stepped inside, although Daphne wasn’t sure if that was because of the stench or the associated memories. But they made quick work of turning the place upside down for anything expensive and/or dangerous, and Callan even told Daphne about Lucinda’s stash of talismans under the bed. When they’d gathered up everything they didn’t want to destroy, Daphne conjured a fireball and hurled it right at the stained, lumpy couch in the middle of the living room.

They fled the tower as flames climbed up towards the ceiling. Daphne laughed, feeling like a weight had been lifted from her chest, and Callan laughed with her.

They laid down on the grass a safe distance away and watched their old lives burn, and Daphne knew they were both looking forward to the future.


End file.
